On Palm, Competition, and iTunes Sync
Back when the Pre was announced, a frequent conversation topic among developers was “competition” — as in, it would be great to have some healthy competition against the iPhone. At the time, the Pre looked promising, and seemed to be the first viable competitor …
Context & Ripple Effects
When the Pre launched into an iPhone market Palm had already lost once — developers openly hoped it would be the first viable competitor Apple had faced. But by mid-2009 the competitive story was less about hardware than integration: the Pre shipped with an App Catalog tracking far behind Apple's store, which TechCrunch pinned squarely on Palm in June, and Apple broke the Pre's signature iTunes sync feature within weeks of launch.
Palm answered by spoofing a USB vendor ID to pose as an iPod, a move documented in July's re-enabling of iTunes sync, which drew a warning from the USB Implementers Forum. This piece lands after Palm ignored that warning and restored sync again — with Digital Daily among the outlets picking up the defiance. Computerworld's July analysis had already tied the sync flap and Pre hardware issues to real damage for Palm, so the company is choosing provocation over caution while it still lacks app-catalog leverage.
First-order effects
- Pre owners get back direct iTunes media syncing without workarounds, restoring the feature Palm built its launch pitch around.
- Apple must decide whether to break the connection again — each block-and-restore cycle costs it engineering attention and hands Palm a publicity round.
Second-order effects
- The USB Implementers Forum's authority is now on trial in public: if Palm can ignore a member warning without consequence, other vendors learn that spoofing compliant device IDs carries little practical risk.
- Apple gains an incentive to route media transfer away from iTunes-as-gatekeeper toward methods it controls outright, shrinking the value of any third party's sync hack.
Third-order effects
- Smartphone rivalry shifts decisively from specs to ecosystem plumbing — who may talk to whose desktop software — making companion apps like iTunes a competitive weapon rather than a utility.
- If standards bodies cannot enforce interoperability rules against large vendors, disputes migrate to legal and PR channels, setting a template for how platform incumbents and challengers fight over connectivity.
The trend: Mobile competition is migrating from device specifications to control of the connective tissue around devices — stores, sync, and companion software — where Apple holds structural advantage and challengers like Palm resort to protocol-level end runs.